This is the August 19 2010 edition of Who's Blogging What, a newsletter that closely monitors 1,100 top web marketing blogs for online professionals involved in social media, search marketing, email, user experience and web analytics. Subscribers are updated with highlights and useful new links every Thursday. If you would like to be kept up to date you may enter your email address in the box at the right.

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Going Places

The urban sociologist Ray Oldenburg probably sold a few extra copies of his book Celebrating The Third Place this week. His book, explaining the importance of gathering places that were neither home nor work, was cited by Facebook when they announced the much anticipated launch of Facebook Places. The new service was nicely explained by both PC World and Mashable for users and businesses.

The overall reaction to Places was mostly positive, although Between The Lines described the possible 'creep' factor of making your whereabouts known. Facebook seemed to push the long term historical aspect of the service, anecdotally forecasting that users might stumble upon the location where their parents first kissed years ago. Facebook seemed to fully anticipate the privacy issues, although the NYT Bits blog already posted about concerns at the ACLU level.

The ability to have web visitors register using an existing identity from social networks such as Facebook, Twitter, or Yahoo has become a powerful audience building tool. The use of an established social media identity not only streamlines the registration process but also gives your business a head start on building deeper relationships with visitors. Some highlights from this special report: